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Helena Diamond
Helena Diamond is a Spectre. In years gone by, before the destruction of the warp, she was a Custodis and member of The Dark Avengers. She was also at one point the Princess of Aprillia, and served for a number of years as a member of the High Counvikel. Character History Arsinos (NB: Due to the convergence of events, this section of this page also largely serves as a history of the 2nd AAC civil war, largely because nowhere else on the wiki really covers this event, despite it being essentially one of the main reasons Arsinos came to an end.) Helena was born Helena Elizabeth Diamond in the Aprillian city of Palaria, to parents John and Rebecca, who were a low level weapons maintenance salesman and a dentist, respectively. She had one younger sister, Alison, who was born two years after Helena. In her early years, she had a fairly normal middle class upbringing. She was top of her class in Maths and Sciences at school, and was a popular child. She dreamed of studing marine biology at the University of Vegasopolis and hoped to one day study deep sea life in the Wharrgarbl sea. However, the political climate in AAC was unstable at best in the last few years of Arsinos. After a succession of hyper agressive presidential regimes, protests and rebellion started to occur across the nation. Helena's mother was a political activist who spearheaded some peaceful protests in Palaria. However, as the government grew more and more authoritarian, these protests increasingly became chaotic and violent, with state forces often brutalising protesters. One day, when Helena was 17, Helena and her father were visiting universities in mainland AAC when Rebecca and Alison attended what was supposed to be an organised non-violent sit in protest at a local Church of The Table. Government forces stormed the building and took everyone inside captive for "questioning". When Rebecca refused to go and tried to argue with her, the men shot Alison in the head to make an example of those who didn't comply, and then beat Rebecca within an inch of her life before shoving her in the back of a van and taking her away. She was never seen again. Upon returning to Palaria and learning of what had transpired, John and Helena decided to take action. Using contacts from his industry, John managed to arm many of the protesters, and Palaria soon became the starting point for a full nationwide civil war. Despite the acts being perpetrated by the government, many were still loyal to the AAC establishment (largely due to propaganda) and viewed the insurrectionists as anarchists and terrorists. Many of these loyalists also took up arms and fought against the rebels. Despite the rebels making increasing ground in other cities such as Faraviera (the acting capital, since Paramoria was in lockdown due to the Blackstar problem), in Palaria, they found themselves increasingly outnumbered and were forced largely to move their bases of operations outside of the city. A rebel force, led by John Diamond and including Helena, managed to take the suburb town of Nuaia, and this town was used as a base for much of the northern Haringtopia rebellion army. During this period, John Diamond was known to be a bit unstable himself and was so distraught by the death of his wife and daughter than he struggled as a military commander just by himself, often relying on the support of his survivng daughter Helena, whom he considered his rock during this time. Eventually, joined by many rebels from across the north, and with backing from numerous military contracters wary of government instablity and the increasing insanity of the current government, along with other nations who were unfriendly with AAC, John Diamond marched a 85,000 strong army of rebels into the city of Palaria to war. While this battle has largely been ignored in many Arsinese and Barvosi history books, the seige of Palaria was one of the most drawn out and brutal battles in Arsinos history. It lasted nearly four months, and an estimated 700,000 people died, either from fighting, starvation, or general colatteral damage. Helena took it upon herself to try and ferry innocent civillians to safety otuside of the city, as well as acting as a scout for safe locations for rebel bases. She was forced to fight on many occasions, and proved herself very capable with handguns. The rebels eventually managed to push the loyalists out of the city centre, and controlled most of the north of the city. Despite some reinforcements arriving to aid the loyalists, the loyalists were eventually forced to surrender the city to the rebels, mostly for external reasons. Faraviera at this point had almost completely been taken by the rebels, who were beginning to surround the governments defences and assembly buildings. The government ordered many of its forces to rejoin the main force fighting the rebels in mainland AAC, and decided holding on to a city in the far north of Haringtopia wasn't worth the losses. Also at this time, a war had broken out between AAC and a Shaderian/Lexilolian alliance, which in the wake of the devastation the civil war was causing, AAC looked set to lose a lot of land, with its forces increasingly either being slaughtered or defecting to the rebel side. However, this wasn't the end of troubles in Palaria. With no aircraft or anti-aircraft weapons, Palaria was incredibly vulnerable to the many airstrikes that were sent upon it by the government. John and Helena started a campaign to try and get everyone to make their own bomb shelters, and though it did help a great many survive, it is estimated that another half a million people died from these airstrikes after the seige had ended. With forces approaching swiftly both internally and externally, the AAC government essentially operated from a bunker beneath Faraviera. It is heavily speculated that during the events of these wars, the government were increasingly becoming victims of Whiro's mind games and had lost all sanity to paranoia, not too dissimilar to what had happened to Solomon Masher before Dog Bollock fell. Inevitably, cooped up and increasingly insane, the Aprillian government took what it thought was its last option. It set 9 nuclear weapons on a course for various locations around Arsinos in many different countries, often seemingly at random. This event is now known as The Day The World Died, as it effectively began a full scale nuclear war that within the space of 3 hours made the vast majority of Arsinos an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland. Palaria was one of the few areas of AAC that got away from the nuclear war unscathed. As the world fell into ruin, John Diamond heard from a contact in Lupaia that the leaders and supposedly "important" people from each country were boarding a spaceship from Loveshack to find a new planet to inhabit. With the assumed death of the Aprillian leaders, John and Helena seized their moment and got as many of the rebels as possible to board stolen ships and planes and head to Loveshack. Despite most of the rest of the world loathing the nation of AAC, it was put to a vote by the surviving UN, and most came round and saw that these rebels had fought against the government and were victims, not perpetrators of the atrocities, and let on board. John was hailed as a hero by all of the remaining Aprillian people, and was named King of Diamonds as a ceremonial title, which soon became reality after a discussion with the other rebel leaders that had made it to the ark, deciding not to continue on as AAC, but instead to be reborn as a new nation with John as king. And thus the modern Barvosi nation of Aprillia was born. Due to the new system being unanimously agreed to be a monarchy, Helena was given the title of princess, a title she didn't really ask for or like. Barvos Upon landing on Barvos, Helena spent the first few months aiding her father to oversee the creation and settlement of the new country. Despite her initial misgivings, she actually took to her role in Aprillia quite well, become a skilled but fair diplomat, and also serving to reign in some of her fathers more rash and angressive decisions, as despite the facade, he had been broken mentally and physically from the death of the rest of his family, and the events of the ensuing war. Helena was well liked in Aprillia, and it was thought by all that she would one day grow to be a thoughtful and wise queen. The king one day rashly decided to go to war with Dalania over a petty disagreement. Helena was dismayed by this and never ever wanted to see a war again in her life. She secretly took a trip to the Dalanian capital to discuss peace terms. However, as she attempted to make her return, she was captured by an Ork raiding party and taken back to their ship, and the rest is history... Eternity War It took Helena a while to come to terms with her new powers (super speed), but eventually grew into a useful member of the team. During a particularly nasty encounter with Calas Typhon, early on, he created a demonic doppelganger of Helena, which returned to Aprillia, and proceeded to murder the King, Helena's father, before it was defeated by Cayden Masher. During Ascendancy, Helena's confidence was knocked for a while after a mission that went wrong and resulted in the deaths of a bus full of innocent people. This negatively affected how she saw herself during the events on the ship, so she took a backseat for much of the future missions. Upon returning to Barvos, she moved back to Aprillia, and after saving the High Counvikel from a murderous blackmailer, she was invited once agin to join the ruling council of Aprillia. It was during this time where she regained much of her confidence, both in herself as a person and abilities as a Custodis. She was noted as a fair and liberal leader, which sometimes put her at odds with the rest of the Counvikel, but made her beloved by Aprillian civillians. Upon meeting with Isaac Masher, and discussing the possibility of destroying the warp and ending the Eternity War, Helena became mostly based in Amun-Seth, but still helped rule Aprillia from afar. During this period, she was one of the few Custodis to side with Isaac and push for the complete destruction of the warp. When the team finally came to blows with Monty's army, the entire group would split over this decision, with Helena, Bloodstone, Paddy and Serenity siding with Isaac and the others siding with either Cayden or Typhon. However, she soon realised that Isaac's mind had been poisoned by Whiro, so she personally attempted to assasinate him during a further skirmish with the steel tide. She, along with the others, did not succeed, but did incapacitate him long enough for the survivng members of the group to join Cayden and the others and reach The House of Gold and Bones. Before leaving, she sent a message to the counvikel tending her resignation, not beleiving she would return. Upon arriving to the House of Gold and Bones, Helena was one of the team that discovered the singularity, a method of destroying the warp with minimal casualties, and the one they would eventually use. Before the final battle, Zach kissed her, and the two agreed to go on a date after everything was over. Helena lost a hand in the final battle to destroy the warp, but otherwise survived and returned to Barvos alive and in relatively good shape. Post-Eternity War The years following the destruction of The Warp were not kind to Helena. Things started out well. She declined to move back to Aprillia, after much deliberating, and instead settled in Amun-Seth. Helena and Zach started dating, and would eventually marry and have a son, Max Almec. Helena initially worked as a political science lecturer at Devils Crag university, but eventually left to take care of her son. However, during this time, it became increasingly clear that she was suffering from a form of PTSD, brought on by the loss of her powers and return to normalcy after the Warp's destruction. She struggled to cope with crippling anxiety attacks and severe depression, and due to her beleiving everyone else was fine, she tried to hide it. She began to silently resent her family and spent a lot of time alone. Eventually, Lisa Cullen, the last remaining member of the Counvikel from Helena's tenure, came to ask her to help head up a new division in Aprillia tasked with investigating Titans and other supernatural threats, the Spectral Taskforce. Beleiving this to be a chance to give herself the space she needed to heal, she accepted, and moved back to Aprillia. Her and Zach continued to try and keep their marriage afloat despite the distance, but eventually, after a particularly bad anxiety attack, Helena found herself sharing a bed with a colleague, Bob, and their marriage dissolved. Worse still, Lisa Cullen retired (and susbequently dissapeared) shortly afterwards, leaving control of Aprillia essentially solely to Violet Bloodstone, who hated all of the Outlaws/Dark Avengers for various reasons. Her job became increasingly difficult under Bloodstone's attempts to shut down her department. It made matters worse that Cayden, her primary source of information, had been witholding much of what he knew, meaning her department wasn't actually able to acheive much during this time. Helena began to spiral into a deep, deep depression, peppered with debilitating anxiety attacks, and barely managed to keep herself afloat, developing a chronic addiction to anti-anxiety medication provided by ExoTech. Things finally began to look up for her, after a desperate visit to Amun Seth to liase with Cayden. Cayden saw the state she was in, and decided to throw her a bone, by explaining the real situation that had been going on in The Stormlands, and providing a dead titan for her team to experiement on. Helena's taskforce made a lot of progress in the field of Dracology, discovering hitherto unknown facts about titan biology. Despite Bloodstone still being determined to shut Helena down, this made the Spectral Taskforce the talk of the international intelligence community, and even drew the attention of ExoTech, who funded her lab with state of the art equipment and technology, the likes of which was not thought to exist on Barvos. This however, drew the attention of The Syndicate, who started following her, with an apparent intent to assasinate her. Cayden warned her of this, and therefore Helena relocated her taskforce to Amun-Seth, and joined Cayden's team of Spectres, as their scientific researcher, also helping to advise Cayden with the ruling of Amun Seth. Revenant Upon the birth of the Skybound, Helena also basically took on the role of Titan paediatrician, using the knowledge she had recently gained to help look after The Skybound and help them when they became ill or injured. Alongside this, she continued her role as reaearch scientist for the Spectres, alongside Johnathon Bradley when he arrived. Helena began to care very much for the younglings, and was adamantly against Echo being recruited as a Spectre, a position that eventually everyone else agreed with in hindsight. After the creation of Fynx, Helena gave him a checkup and learned the full extent of his powers. She decided not to tell Cayden, fearing that he would use Fynx in the same way he had used Echo. After the younglings ran away, with help from Fynx's powers, Cayden fired Helena citing her lack of trust. Helena, along with Zankai, decided to mount her own mission to find the younglings and bring them home. They followed the trail to a tavern in the west Amun-Seth desert, where they encountered suspiciously hostile locals. After a firefight in which they easily won, they chased the bartender in to the back room, with the intention of questioning him. The bartender then used a teleporter as a weapon, which sucked Helena in as she ducked for cover thinking it was a bomb, and transported her to the prison cells in the Skeleton Fort. Here, she was tortured by Jaden Von Karston for days, while he also posed as her cellmate in attempt to draw more information from her. During a particularly nasty torture session, Helena cut off her own mechanical arm and one of her ears in order to spare the pain of an innocent youngling that had also been captured. She eventually condemned said youngling to death, when given the choice between that or revealing information about the Skybound. She beleived that the youngling dying was a preferable alternative to what she had seen done to other younglings in the cells, with Jaden having cut off their limbs, wings, tail, eyes and tongue to turn them into what he called "pillows" while leaving the younglings alive. She was eventually released after Cayden made a deal with Cassio Von Karston for her freedom, and after a mutual apology, rejoined the Spectres, though in a much more limited capacity, with her injuries from her time in the skeleton fort making many of her former tasks more difficult. Personality Helena is generally considered to be a pleasant and easy to get along with member of the team, though at times she can be quite headstrong and stubborn, which has brought her into conflict with other members of the team. She is haunted by the events of her past, but generally masks this quite well, only breaking down when she is drunk, which is a rare thing for her, as she is well aware of the (metaphorical) demons that resurface. She can be shy and timid in social situations, and is awkward being the centre of attention, despite her previous tenure as a princess. Helena is terrified of failing, and this can sometimes manifest itself in extreme nervousness and sometimes even panic attacks in deadly situations, which do not help her. She was eager to fight in the eternity war against Whiro, but this was more out of a sense of duty than anything else, Helena under almost all circustances abhorrs violence, and is disgusted by the killing of inncoccents, especially after how her sister was murdered, and the horrors she saw during the siege of Palaria. Despite all of this, she is inherently disappointed with the powers that she's been given, and her failures to use them well only add to an inferiority complex she has developed in contrast to The Outlaws and the other Dark Avengers. She completely detests being condescendingly referred to as "princess" by other members of the team, assuming she spent her life as a pampered 1%er. With good reason, considering she's probably seen more hardship than most. Helena is completely irreligious. She was bought up in a Table-worshipping household, but denounced the idea of any sort of worship towards a deity during the civil war. She firmly believes the universe exists in chaos and everyone can choose their own destiny, even in the face of titans trying to predict and manipulate the paths of everyone. Since the end of The Eternity War storyline, Helena has become an overstressed workaholic, who rarely socialises, mostly to distract herself from her own issues relating to her PTSD. She looks much older than her actual age (biologically, of course, her actual age is probably pushing 200 by now), with streaks of grey hair and a harried, wrinkled face. However, she has not changed entirely, her work is intended to do good, and she still displays an enjoyment for the things she used to do, however much she tries to hide it. Former Powers *Molecular Acceleration - When Helena actives her primary power it vastly increases both her physical and cognitive speed to vastly superior levels. Helena can choose to make two actions part turn as part of the same action, however each of these must be decided at the same time. She cannot make one action then 'wait and see' the outcome before deciding on the second. All her actions take into account her faster speed when being compared to the actions of others. Alternatively, she can combined her two actions into a single action, which vastly increases the effectiveness of said action - if it requires a roll, the roll gains a bonus. If it is a melee attack, Helena either takes a run up or use a significant amount of speed to put dangerous force into the attack, boosting damage to +25 offense for a single attack against one target. As a result of her enhanced speed, Helena also gains +15 to melee and ranged defence. *Rushdown - This is a single use ability, with a 48 hour cooldown. It doesn't require a run up, but spending a turn or two getting some distance will improve the rolls by +10 per turn. When in 'Rushdown' mode, Helena enters a rapid trance and darts between multiple enemies or around a single boss, smashing them aside with enhanced strength. Rushdown increases Helena's number of attacks to three per turn, each with +25 to melee offense. This also increases her ranged and melee defence to +40. Rushdown remains active until Helena is injured or stunned. Category:Dark Avengers Category:Politicians